1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of flatpack integrated chip carriers.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
There are many forms of one piece flatpack chip carriers. See e.g., Ralstin U.S. Pat. No. 4,435,724 assigned to Wells Electronics, Inc., Alemanni U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,505 assigned to Gibson-Egan Co., Tems U.S. Pat. No. 3,652,974 assigned to Milcross Control, Inc. (aka Milton Ross), Barnes U.S. Pat. No. 3,529,277, and Suverkropp et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,471,865 assigned to Signetics Corp. See also Morton, Jr. U.S. Pat. No. 4,444,309 assigned to Bourns, Inc., a leadless chip carrier.
Common to these carriers is a design that is intended to accommodate a specific size chip. However, chips come in many different widths, lengths and thicknesses. Thus they are loaded into many different configuration carriers by their manufactures. These different carrier configurations represent a barrier to automatic assembly operations.